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Thursday, January 25, 1912: Gave my ear to a free-for-all lecture this afternoon. It was delivered by Mr. Teacher, the chief part of which was about cheating on examinations. I’ve been so worked up at this, although Conscience tells me not to. Anyway I believe it is time to stop, and do better in the future. So now, I will try to bid adieu to all ways of crookedness and get the things in my head instead of having them on paper.

Recent photo of the building that once housed the McEwensville school.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

My grandmother cheating on tests!! . . . .Grandma, what were you thinking?

Sometimes it’s hard to interpret what Grandma wrote without judging her. Grandma was 16 and about 40 years younger than me when she wrote this diary entry. I’m looking at this entry through the lens of a mother and I can’t completely wrap my head around why a teen would decide to cheat.

I want to think that the world was a simpler place a hundred years ago—and that students were less likely to cheat back then. But I’m not sure. This is the second time Grandma’s mentioned cheating in the diary.

10 Responses

I remember cheating on spelling tests in the 6th grade back in the 1950s. Lucky for me I didn’t get caught. My mother would have killed me! I was a good student and don’t remember why I didn’t just learn the words for those few tests.

[…] the past two weeks indicated that she was working really hard on algebra. In January her teacher caught her cheating—and she’s really been trying to turn a new leaf. And, the entry I posted yesterday indicated […]

[…] received her February report card she’d gotten a new teacher. The old one had quit mid-year. He caught her cheating shortly before he quit. I wonder if her February deportment grade had been affected by that […]

Hello

I look forward to sharing my grandmother's diary with relatives and friends. Helena Muffly (Swartz) kept a diary from 1911-1914. She was 15 years old when she began this diary. I plan to post these entries one day at a time—exactly 100 years after she wrote them. I hope you enjoy this glimpse back to a slower paced time.

The header is a picture of the farm where my grandmother lived when she wrote this diary. It is located in Northumberland County in central Pennsyvlania about a mile outside of McEwenvsille. My father said that the buildings look similar to what they looked like when he was a child.